by Ellyn, Court
The ground rumbled under Kelyn’s toes. The air shook against his ears, loud with brays and the stamping of feet.
The six whirligigs lined up squarely, bobbing, unnoticed by the ogres running below.
“Faster,” Daryon muttered.
Through the spyglass, Kelyn watched the whirligig spin so fast that their metal wings were naught but a blur.
Daryon expelled a hiss of effort, then opened his eyes looking satisfied with himself. “Pins engaged. Globes smashed.”
From each spinning device, black rain fell.
~~~~
Kethlyn lay on the cot in his pavilion, listening to the rumble of wagon wheels and the shouts of orderlies. The wounded, his wounded, were being loaded into them. His plan had worked. Against all odds, it had worked. When Saffron appeared to him, he feared he was hallucinating. Realizing his eyes—and the fairy—told him the truth, he’d broken at last and wept like a child. His sister was safe. Lothiar’s schemes undermined. At the cost of his brother, and thousands of soldiers.
As he drifted toward sleep, he reasoned that Da was mobilizing the hospital because he was preparing for a hasty retreat back to Tírandon. Then ogres were chasing him across a wide grassy field with no gate or tower in sight. He woke, startled.
The heat of the day gathered inside the expanse of red silk; Kethlyn shivered. Fever swelled behind his eyes. It was the gashes from the ogre’s claws and sheer exhaustion that made him ill. Lady Aisley had assured him his wounds would mend; he just needed time.
He didn’t like the idea of staying abed while men fought. But what good would he serve on the battlefield? His sword arm was in stitches. His left hand was still weak from the assassin’s blade. And fever dreams tugged at him. Sleep edged in, and he saw light. He tried to look at it straight on, but it receded like a face ducking behind a wall. Not for me, not this time.
Even the memory of the light was taken from him. Alyster had said the light was all he could see; Kethlyn must’ve seen it too, but he couldn’t remember.
A voice grunted at him. A hand jostled his shoulder. Leng’s creased and bearded face peered down. “My lord? There’s a place for you in the cart.”
“I’m not going. Not until my father does.” To prove he was fit enough to stay, he rolled off the cot. The gashes on his leg throbbed as blood rushed into them. He stamped his foot and hobbled around till he was sure his leg would support his weight. Slowly the haze of his last dose of poppy wine cleared from his head.
“If you insist on this stubbornness, at least go back to bed.”
Kethlyn grabbed his boots. “No, I need to see them off. They fought for me. They need to see I’m all right, that I haven’t abandoned them.”
Leng saw sense and draped a blanket around Kethlyn’s shoulders. They ducked from the pavilion into the sunlight. Several wagons formed a line. Wounded Evaronnans gathered around them, waiting their turn to climb in. Orderlies carried others on stretchers and hoisted them into the beds. Kethlyn eased in among them, patting shoulders, squeezing hands, muttering encouragement.
A soldier no older than sixteen or eighteen realized Kethlyn was telling his people goodbye. “But, m’ lord, if you’re staying—”
Kethlyn stopped him from stepping down from the wagon. “Nonsense. Get back to Tírandon and recuperate. I’ll join you shortly.” Touching that his soldiers, these few who had survived, preferred to remain at his side.
A murmur started low among the wagons, wafted to the next and the next, until the murmur grew into a chant. “Revenant! Revenant! Revenant!”
Kethlyn looked to Leng. The commander was grinning. He did nothing to shut them up. He saw his lord’s dismay and shrugged. “Rumor spreads fast. Everyone knows of your battle with King Valryk. That you were drowned true and good. And last night that damnable bard was singing something about the Undying.”
Kethlyn groaned. “I’ll pinch out his blue tongue with hot pliers.”
As a child, he’d been known as the Son of the Swiftblade. He had tried to live up to it, drilling relentlessly with sword and shield and dagger. He earned bloody knuckles, bruises, and lacerations for his trouble, and at last realized his father’s shadow was simply too vast to surpass. Seemed he had earned his own moniker now. As grand as ‘Kethlyn Revenant’ sounded, he wasn’t sure he liked it. He had led these men and women to slaughter. Yes, he had bled beside them, but he was no hero, his blood was worth no more than theirs, yet it was his name rising on the wind.
The wagons pulled away. Kethlyn watched them go, hand raised. The chant continued until the wagons at last jounced out of earshot.
Kethlyn tugged the blanket tight around his shoulders. “How is our prisoner, by the way?”
Leng glanced in the direction of a small gray tent standing separate from the tidy rows. “His mother saw to his wounds last night, I’m aware.”
An uneasy feeling twisted Kethlyn’s belly. Queen or no, a mother was a mother. “She’s not to approach the tent again.” He’d hate to be the man who turned Briéllyn away. Sooner or later her complaint would reach his ears, and he’d be forced to stand his ground. Ugly. “How many guards?”
“Four, as you mandated.”
“Double it. I don’t want Valryk slipping away.”
“I’ll see to it immediately.” Leng saluted and strode off.
Kethlyn realized his legs were shaking. His eyes ached with fever. Time to play the invalid again. He started for his pavilion. Aisley met him halfway. She stretched shoulders sore from hunching over wounds, though he doubted her route was accidental. “Should you be up?” With a glance she appraised his bandages, inspected the stitches. All his moving around had yet to undo her delicate work.
“I hope to sleep all afternoon,” he assured her. “If the ogres are cooperative.” He was approving the shape of Aisley’s smile when he heard the commotion.
Leng was running toward him. “M’ lord, come quick.”
People were gathering outside Valryk’s tent. The four guards in Evaronnan red spread their arms to hold the crowd at bay.
Kethlyn hobbled as fast as his wounds permitted. He pressed through the gawkers. Whispers assaulted his ears.
“…dead?”
“…had it coming…”
He barged through the flaps. Valryk swung from the tent’s cross-pole, turning in slow circles. “No, no!” Kethlyn wrapped his arms around Valryk’s knees and raised him up. His body was already cooling, growing rigid. His face was blue and bloated.
Leng produced a dagger and sawed the rope knotted about the central post. The body dropped heavily across Kethlyn’s shoulders. He staggered to the ground. Leng loosed the slip knot and tossed the rope away.
Too late, Goddess, too late. Hours too late. “But how…? How did he get his hands on…?” Throughout the small confines of the tent, the meager contents were neatly arranged. The cot occupied a corner, neither askew nor turned on its side. A corner of the blanket was turned down. Valryk’s boots sat side by side, the ruined velvet doublet folded on the grass beside them. There was nothing else. Neither chair nor table nor box nor crate. Valryk’s hands lay lax at his sides. Purple bruises marred his wrists.
Kethlyn pushed himself to his feet, fury boiling into feverish cheeks. He glared at each of the four guards. His men. His own men. They couldn’t meet his eye. Even if they hadn’t done the deed, they surely knew who had.
“Arrest these men,” he told Leng, “and the four on watch before them.”
The guards looked to one another, startled, white-faced.
Kethlyn shoved two of them aside and broke a path through the crowd. “Start confessing!” he called. “I’ll find out who hanged him if I have to torture the bloody lot of you!”
Leng chased after him. “M’ lord, are you sure?”
“How does a man hoist himself to a tent pole?” he shouted. Goddess, this isn’t what he wanted! He paced wildly, rage racing through his veins, then he turned and saw Briéllyn. His gut plummeted. She glanced between him a
nd the crowd outside the tent. He laid his hands on her shoulders. A wail broke from her mouth. Kethlyn tried to hold her back, but she broke free. He followed her as fast as his leg could carry him, through the crowd and into the tent.
She knelt over her son’s body, rocking, rocking, as she keened with open mouth, open eyes. Kethlyn shut the tent flaps and fell to his knees beside her and dragged her wailing into his arms. Queen or not, a mother first.
~~~~
36
In slack-jawed amazement, Lothiar watched his ogres change. Their mighty limbs seized up. Their muscles convulsed. The charge on the War Commander’s hill had halted. Swords, axes, and shields fell from powerless fingers. Startled outcries swelled to shrieks of pain. Black liquid dribbled down green-gray skin. Black tendrils like smoke coiled up from the trodden ground. And the ogres transformed. Bones popped, flesh distended, arms and legs and spines and skulls turned to masses of jelly, jelly that sought new dimensions. The wind filled with rancid odor as bowels shifted and opened. A hiss as something leaked from veins and pores. The air crackled with avë. Avë cut loose.
In moments, squirming, lurching toad-like things slithered from inside armor. Some had the tails of lizards, the webbed feet of frogs, the teeth of water dragons, the tiny stupid eyes of tortoises. Dozens of lifeforms mashed into useless, clumsy, floundering bodies. In their agony, they fell upon one another, clawing, gnawing, shredding.
Nearly a full Fire Spear regiment. Lost.
Emptied, the mechanisms spinning in the sky retreated into the veil. Two more raced across the battlefield. One flew toward Lothiar’s position, hesitating neither left nor right.
Lothiar hauled a bow from his weapon stand, bent it around his leg and forced the string into place. He sighted along the arrow and let it fly. The shaft wedged between two thin metal wings, stopping the device’s determined flight. It shook itself, like a pugilist denying a concussion. Something inside shattered, and a fount of black fluid vomited forth. Ogres dived aside. Splatters caught them anyway. Splatters struck Lothiar’s cheek, the back of his hand, his breastplate.
“Captain!” cried Da’ith and shoved a kerchief at him.
Lothiar scraped the droplets away. Cold, unbelievably cold. The liquid dissipated from his fingertips, from the kerchief in inky tendrils. Yet the cold clung to him. He waited for the pain to strike deep in his bones. When it didn’t, he huffed in contempt.
Where the liquid had fanned across the ground, ogres thrashed. The wounded device collapsed among them with a graceless clunk.
The second device had loosed its load in a broad circle over the Storm Mount ogres. The unlucky company had been waiting for the signal to charge. Now they couldn’t retreat fast enough. Shoving, shouting, in utter disarray. A small splash, a foot set down in a black rivulet on the ground, was all it took to induce the transformation.
“Paggon! Your horn!” Lothiar shouted. “Bring them to order!”
Ironfist raised a curled bull’s horn and bellowed into it. Again. Again. The note assaulted the sun-and-scream-choked air. Gradually the Storm Mount ogres reformed their lines. Well away from the black mist rising from the earth.
“Captain, look.” Da’ith pointed across the writhing battlefield. The Miraji veil evaporated. The enemy lines materialized, stretching across several hills. Lines of archers divided, making way for … whom?
Lothiar snapped open his spyglass. Dwarves. A company of dwarves marched down the central hill, directly into the middle of the black mist, and there they stopped. They ignored the twisted creatures hopping frantically away from them, planting korzai in them only if they hopped too close.
Safety in the mist. No ogre would approach the dwarves now. But they could strike at any ogre charging the hill on either side of the black puddles.
Lothiar raised the spyglass to search the hilltops. Where are you? Daxon, that bleating traitor, said Dathiel had accompanied the duke into the Heights. For the past three days, Lothiar had spotted neither hide nor hair of the mother-loving son of a bitch. Not one stray tongue of flame, not one fork of lightning or rumble of thunder. The traitor must’ve lied.
Near the center, Elarion in gray crouched among the lines of Regulars. No facial marks. Not dranithion. Standing behind them, a man wore gold enameled armor beneath a ragged gray cloak. He opened his arms, and another pair of devices rose to hover at his shoulders.
That’s not Dathiel.
“Daryon.” Lothiar had never met the avedra in person. Didn’t want to. The ogres of the Drakhans, of Sky Rock and Storm Mount, yes, even Paggon, had told him wild tales. They turned Daryon into a legend, a force of nature, a steel-clawed madman. No ogre willingly approached the ruins of Tánysmar. And after what Rashén Varél had told him? Brother. Cousin. Impossible.
Through the long-reaching lens, Daryon looked like any other duínovë. His skin harbored no dragon-like glow. His hands were just hands. But his eyes. They shone with unnatural color, and even across half a mile they pinned Lothiar.
So where in hell was Dathiel? Not knowing worried Lothiar far more than having lightning blasting down around him.
No way he had discovered the Pit’s location. Did Rashén know? Might the dragon have told Dathiel where his niece was being kept? Damn dragon. As a precaution, Lothiar had sent Ruvion to Brogula Kaem at dawn. Best keep eyes on the place.
Indubitably Dathiel would turn up somewhere, inconvenient and loud.
“Dis bad, Cap,” said Paggon, worrying his warhorn between oversized paws. “Dem naenis fear. Eart’. Sky. All black.”
“Remember your courage, my friend. The battle is still in our favor.”
“How?” asked Da’ith. He scowled balefully at the malformed creatures trying to squirm or hop or burrow away from the battlefield.
Lothiar forced calm into his voice. “Despite the carnage inflicted by those devices, we still outnumber the War Commander’s host.” Was his lieutenant blind? A sweep of his hand took in six more regiments of Fire Spear, three of Dragon Claw, and two more of Storm Mount. They darkened the hillsides like locusts on grain. The ogres shifted uneasily, watching the skies for darting constructs. “If we must, we will summon Tugark and the rest of Fire Spear from the Kaem. But that won’t be necessary. Tréandyn is on his way.”
“You summoned him from Brynduvh?” Da’ith looked surprised that Lothiar had ordered the Thunderstone ogres to abandon the siege. The Shadow Clan was to continue harassing the White Falcon’s gates.
“Tréandyn should be porting Grayscar and his clan as we speak. By noon, he’s to fall upon the human rear.”
But for those black-spewing devices, things were going far better than Lothiar had expected. He had no need of prisoners now. Cutting through the duke’s army had posed little trouble. Especially without Dathiel moving fire and earth to aid them. Lothiar had been only moments away from ordering his ogres to stand down, from demanding Kethlyn lay down his arms and surrender. But who should turn up on the field but the War Commander himself? Seemed Kelyn would trade thousands of lives for his children after all.
“In the meantime, we need to neutralize Daryon.” The concussion of battle sang in opposite corners of the field. The Miraji were attacking Lothiar’s reserve. The War Commander’s tactics had surrounded the ogres inside a bladed triangle. As much as Lothiar feared the Miraji, he feared Daryon more. Daryon was an unknown. He could make metal fly. Of what else was he capable? “Lieutenant, take Fogrim and half of Dragon Claw. Overrun the War Commander’s position. Sweep it from the western flank. We’ll do our best to keep the Miraji occupied, but do watch your rear.”
“But the … that stuff!” Da’ith gesticulated frantically. Black mist spread wide, clinging to heather and gorse. Was it Lothiar’s imagination or was the mist leeching the color from leaves? Would his own skin turn gray and brittle? “The naenion won’t follow me up there, not now. Look at them.”
Lothiar glared promises of pain. “Where did you put your spine, Lieutenant? You see black mist? Go around. Must
I remind you how to tie your shoes as well?”
Da’ith’s chest puffed up. Before he could mouth off, Lothiar grabbed him by the arm. “Daryon is up there, controlling those machines. Understand what I’m saying? Once Tréandyn has arrived, the War Commander will be surrounded. The only way he will get his army off this field is if Daryon and his damn devices send the ogres into panic. Daryon must be your primary target.”
The rage of insult made Da’ith’s fear easier to swallow. His eyes narrowed to slits, as if it were Lothiar’s throat he yearned to open. “I need those chains to capture him.”
Lothiar glanced at his warhorse and the shiny chains dangling from the saddle. “Daryon’s too dangerous. Kill him.” Where are you now, dragon? No taunts? No warnings? Fuck you and the wind you rode in on.
“I understand, sir.” Da’ith hammered a fist to his chest. “No mercy.” He strode off. With a snap of his fingers, Fogrim fell in behind him.
The Dragon Claw chieftain had recovered slowly from the wounds he’d sustained at Ilswythe. He was so proud of his scars that he hadn’t mended his armor or his leggings. Arrow holes in leather and mail showed scarred flesh beneath. But when Fogrim learned he had lost his dwarf-head helm, he’d thrown an ogre-sized fit. The luxurious copper-colored beard of the dwarven hero had fallen off in some field near Ilswythe and not been recovered.
Soon as he was able to hobble around, Fogrim had visited the trenches outside Tírandon, shortly before the duke overran them, and claimed himself a new trophy. The long flaxen hair of a female dwarf cascaded across his shoulders. The top half of her skull, eyelids stitched shut, nose and upper lip desiccated, perched atop his hairless head.
He and Da’ith led the Dragon Claw regiment in a wide berth around the drifting black mist and the chanting dwarves. Feet stamping, the naenion hooked back to claim a hillside near the western extremity of the enemy lines.
